The venerated filmmaker Eisenstein is comparable in talent, insight andwisdom, with the likes of Shakespeare or Beethoven; there are few - ifany - directors who can be elevated to such heights. On the back of hisrevolutionary film Battleship Potemkin, he was celebrated around theworld, and invited to the US. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood andmaliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled toMexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by Americanpro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer UptonSinclair. Eisenstein's sensual Mexican experience appears to have beenpivotal in his life and film career - a significant hinge between theearly successes of Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, which madehim a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career withAlexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and The Boyar's Plot.